TRENDS

`Like New' Books

Instant used books sad story for authors

With some online sellers underpricing new tomes for quick profit, writers lose chances at royalties and best-seller listings

August 08, 2005|By Judy Artunian, Special to the Tribune

On July 16, just hours after the midnight release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," used copies of the book were selling on eBay for half of the book's $29.95 list price.

It's a scenario that has become commonplace when high-profile books debut--publishers competing with themselves on the burgeoning used-book market.

"Used books have always been around, but not in the face of the new-book world like they are today. The Internet has made them more of a consequence," said Michael Powell, president of Portland, Ore.-based Powell's Books and the founder of Powell's Bookstore in Chicago.

The used book market, while small, is growing fast, with the number of households buying at least one used book jumping 9.2 percent between 2003 and 2004, according to Ipsos BookTrends in Chicago. Households buying at least one new book grew at less than half the pace, 4.2 percent, according to the book industry group.

Attempts to better tally used book sales are under way, but it's difficult because a single copy of a book could change hands multiple times with the speed of the Internet.

Books listed on Web sites as being "like new" or "as new" pose the most serious threat to new-book sales--and many in the industry say they have doubts that many of these books came from basements and garage sales.

"My theory is that these are not truly used books. We're realizing that there is another market out there," said Barrie Rappaport, chief analyst and manager of Ipsos BookTrends, who works out of the firm's Chicago office. "These are business owners who have purchased the books legitimately, through general resources that are available to any other retailer, online or offline."

At Victoria, British Columbia-based Abebooks, which says it has 70 million books for sale online on any given day, a book that is sold as "as new" online "could have been bought at a store but either not read or read just one time," according to spokesman Richard Davies.

Most sellers tend to stay mum about their sources for these pristine used books. Four other sellers of "like new" books declined to comment.

Dominique Raccah, founder and chief executive of Sourcebooks, a book publisher based in Naperville, said she thinks many of the books are new.

"Obviously books under the `used books' umbrella are not all used books. Many are from Ma and Pa kinds of stores that are buying directly from publisher. They can discount them heavily because they have very little overhead," she said.

Raccah says that when too many copies of a newly released book are sold as used, it can undermine an author's career by jeopardizing his chances of making a best-seller list.

Used-book sales are not reported to Nielsen BookScan, a retail monitoring service for the book industry, nor to the magazines and newspapers that publish best-seller lists.

"Publishers are in the business of promoting our authors. You want to make sure that your authors become well-known. To the extent that you have unreported sales, it hampers the ability of the authors to break out," Raccah said.

`It's making a dent'

Chicago author Sam Weller, whose new book "The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury," was released in April, suspects that some sellers are purchasing books at retail for the purpose of reselling them at a higher price.

"It's virtually impossible to quantify used-book sales, but I know, from an author's point of view, that it's making a dent," he said. "I do a book signing with Ray [Bradbury] and people will come up with a stack of 20 books. You know damned well that they're going right to eBay to sell them. They don't want the books signed to anyone in particular. They just want signatures."

Not that Weller minds.

"If it has some kind of an afterlife as a used book, I'm all for it," he said.

Many authors feel otherwise, complaining that they lose out on royalties when a copy of their book is purchased second-hand, rather than new.

Shortly after Amazon began providing a link to used copies of new books, several authors' groups lodged complaints.

"The problem wasn't that they were making discounted books available, but that the ads for the discounted books appeared alongside the ad for the new book," said Brett Harvey, executive editor of American Society of Journalists and Authors, based in New York City. "We felt that made it too easy for the buyer to purchase the used edition, thereby depriving the author of royalties."

When Amazon declined to move the link to a less-conspicuous spot, the society severed its relationship with the bookseller.

On the other hand, some say that when a book changes hands it could ultimately lead to new-book sales.

Said Powell, "Often a person becomes enamored of an author or a subject and starts looking for additional books by that author or on that subject. And their entry point is often a used book."